Dear Slaveys,
Here are two excerpts from recent comments posted on TDV blogs I’d like to talk about:
1. A response to last week's Dear Slavey column:
I for one have been having a hard time psychologically changing my thinking from that of a job seeker/wage earner to that of an entrepreneur. I have followed many of the same paths as others here, but find that the wage slave mentality still seeps into my actions and thoughts. How do I handle the psychological change from job slave to entrepreneur? I'd love to hear TDV's opinion about that.
2. A response to Feedback Friday on TDV Facebook page:
It's easy to say that I am dumbass for being here in the US when the person saying it is outside the US and living his life. My life is here for now. What other solutions are there…what other things can I be doing to secure my life here? Besides spending all my savings to leave.
I'm beginning to think this anarchy shit is not for me.
Slaveys,
The psychological shift from slave to entrepreneur-not-looking-over-his-shoulder is subtle and happens in degrees. This week I’ll list a few things that you have to look at in your life and change if you want to be free. It won’t happen overnight, but take things one at a time and some day you’ll wake up with a pretty good sense of freedom, despite living in one of the most repressive countries in the world.
Witnessing the absolute clown show at the Republican National Convention last week, I really got a sense the wheels are starting to come off the bus here in the United States. We’re getting more and more letters from Slaveys full of simple frustration. It’s time for all of us who don't have the financial option of leaving the US to take a deep breath and figure out not only how we’re going to physically and financially surive the next few years, but how we’re going to keep from losing our mental stability. We all have to get ourselves into a mindset that gives us enough freedom to rise above what’s going on financially and politically without being locked up…one that lets us create some measure of happiness in our lives no matter what’s going on around us.
I’ve spoken about these things before, but they’re points I’ll probably revisit often, because in addition to specific action items we’ll discuss in Dear Slavey, it’s your attitude and maintaining your health that will ultimately make the difference between ending up on the street, or living a relatively comfortable life as middle class person in the US this decade.
1) Stop living the stereotypical US lottery mentality. I never encourage anyone to stop dreaming or achieving, but you can’t do that by waiting passively for life to happen. Life is short. Do what you have to do now to be happy as soon as possible. And don’t expect anyone else to take care of you, especially not a “boss” or the government. Learn to be self-sufficient and you’ll be free.
2) Stop taking politics seriously. While there might be a few idealistic people running for office, for the most part they’re slick, they’re manipulative, they’re sociopaths, and they’re in it for themselves and the friends they can do favors for. As a middle class person, there’s nothing realistic you can do to change anything the government does, so just stop thinking of what they do as anything more than entertainment.
3) Do one thing, just one thing, every day that gets you closer to achieving something on this list that moves you closer to living in a freer place. That means:
– The ultimate goal is to collaborate with others and network, exchange goods and services you create or source or provide yourself, preferably trading cash/bartering and eventually buying and selling with physical gold or silver.
– Stop using all credit cards.
– Move more and more of your transactions off the grid.
– Make your address and phone numbers private. Use a post office box on your driver’s license (sure you’re not supposed to, but they’ll never know). Don’t answer jury summons mail. 20,000 people in L.A. County every month can’t be wrong.
– Liquidate any asset that has a loan attached to it. If your income is under $75,000-a-year and you have no savings, never “buy” a home with a bank’s money. You will end up paying more in interest than yould pay in rent, along with home association fees if it's a condo, property taxes, and maintenance. And with the economy going further and further south, you’ll never build enough equity for it to make any business sense. Never make payments on anything. Buy the best used car you can afford outright. Even a one-month-old car is a deal compared to brand new.
– Remove anyone from your life who's pulling you down emotionally or financially – NOW. That includes toxic family. Who cares if they're blood – life is hard enough these days without the misery dealing with people who destroy your will to live.
– Stop buying anything you don’t need (except for a few treats now and then). Find ways to get what you need cheaper (I’ll talk about that more in the weeks to come), and if you can’t get health insurance with less than a $500 premium per month, $1,000 deductible, and a $30 copay – cancel it. You can pay for your own day to day healthcare cheaper than that. Get a catastrophic plan that covers you if you’re hit by a bus or get cancer, and pay for your routine doctors visits yourself.
– Get a decent TV, and hook it up to the internet, cancel your cable and stop paying $23-a-movie (with 3D in LA) in a theatre when you can get almost the same experience at home.
– NEVER file your taxes without hiring a good accountant who knows your business so you pay the absolute least you can.
4) Speaking of health, maintain it. Eat healthy food, drink moderately, see a dentist every six months, sleep at least 7 hours-a-night and take one day a week when you don’t have to work more than a couple hours. Hang out with people who make you laugh.
5) Stay away from any encounters with the police. This is the only thing in life I’m going to suggest you don’t try to “work around” in the US. If you interact with them, I’m sad to say, the only way it works now is to do what you’re told. This is a police state and they don’t care about whatever is left of your legal rights. Just avoid them when you can. Only fly when necessary, and when you do, use smaller airports (like Burbank) to avoid the full TSA Gestapo treatment. Don’t talk back—it’s very much like that phrase “they’ll take my gun from my cold dead hands.” Yes they will, and what’s the point in that? Will being dead or in jail make you happy or less of a slave? The way to buck the system is to stay away from confrontations with it intelligently and peacefully. There’s no reasoning with a “state”. It doesn’t care about you. It never did.
Write to me and ask for strategies on how you can achieve any specific thing you’re wondering about on this list and I’ll analyze how to make it happen. There are ways around everything here, except the police. Seriously, they’re poorly trained, and act like rabid dogs.
Have a good week Slaveys!
I wonder if Dear Slavey would mind if I proposed a sixth recommendation: Don't draw the government's attention.
Both Jeff and I sent friend requests to Brandon Raub as soon as we heard about his kidnapping. We did it as a sign of solidarity and to show our opposition to the increasingly outrageous US police state. Brandon accepted both our requests last night. Funny thing is that we got our requests exactly 20 minutes apart. We're guessing that after his recent adventures, Brandon is finally getting around to accepting all the Facebook friend requests that were sent his way when news of his kidnapping broke. (Looks like his friend count has increased by several hundred since his release.)
To be honest, however, we don't line up behind his revolutionary posturing with ex-military phrasing (see Jeff's prior comments on Raub here in the Weekend Vigilante of August 18th). A recent post, for example, declares: "This is a message to the Russians. If there are any of you on American Soil, you had better STAND DOWN." But we will give him points for sheer moxy. In his way he is doing what we do here: mocking the beast and exposing the government for what it is. The difference is that your TDV crew is doing it from a safe distance…
If you are still living in the US, then my advice is not to make a target of yourself. Live free, but do it quietly. As the Ron Paul supporters have been figuring out, being visible and vocal does not actually help change the system or alter the country's trajectory. What it can do is attract the government's attention. That may not be such a big deal now, but it will become a bigger deal as economic conditions in the US deteriorate.
Don't complicate an already difficult situation by making a spectacle of yourself. You can be a survivor or a martyr. Our own survival strategy involves giving the US a wide berth. For those of you for whom leaving is not an option, think of yourselves as living in occupied territory. As regular readers know, in the next few weeks TDV will be debuting a new service specifically to help those of you who will be living with the enemy. Those of you stuck in the USSA for the duration of its empirical nervous breakdown will find the new service very useful in the coming years.
In the meantime you can check out our ongoing TDV newsletter for a deeper macroeconomic analysis than we can offer in our daily blog. Find out more here. We know that obtaining a foreign passport, moving your precious metals offshore, getting a foreign bank account and getting on the New Underground Railroad isn't an option for many of you readers. That doesn't mean we don't want to see you thriving, too.
And by the bye, while you don't have to be confrontational with the police, you don't have to fellate them either. In the event of an encounter with a government thug, do what you can to avoid being kidnapped, but do it with dignity. Always remember that the laws they enforce are merely prejudices and opinions backed by guns and that you have the moral high ground.
Regards,
Editor
The Dollar Vigilante
